Dori: Give $180M back to taxpayers, not Safeco Field

We are hearing an awful lot of criticism of the plan to give the Seattle Mariners $180 million in tax dollars for Safeco Field improvements.

I was somewhat prominent in the conversation about whether we should build that stadium at all. I traveled around the country and talked to the mayors of Baltimore, Cleveland, and Arlington, Texas about their new ballparks to see if it was worth it. I reached the conclusion that it was worth it for Seattle to build a new stadium to keep the Mariners here.

Now, the Mariners organization is saying that if we want them to renew their lease at Safeco Field, they want to get a chunk of the hotel/motel tax for stadium improvements. We’re talking about $180 million.

RELATED: King County councilmember criticizes Mariners’ $180M ask

Could we take that $180 million and put it into homelessness instead? Yes, but that’s like throwing the money away. You might as well burn that pile of cash. You give the politicians $180 million for homelessness — it’s not going to make a dent in the homelessness problem. It may even get worse. We already spend over a billion dollars a year in Seattle and King County on homelessness, and the problem just gets worse. Money does not solve homelessness; it just makes it easier for the politicians to use homelessness.

However, having said that, the owners of the Mariners have seen their investment in the team appreciate by hundreds of millions of dollars. They want this $180 million to keep Safeco Field a world-class facility, meaning to add revenue opportunities for the ball club. These are private owners of a private business. We spent hundreds of millions of dollars building the ballpark, and taxpayers paid the lion’s share of that. Since it’s all about enhancing their revenues, the Mariners should be self-funding.

You know what I’d like to see? You take that hotel/motel tax and return it to the taxpayers. Use it to reduce our property taxes or our car tabs. Return it to the taxpayers. Why is that never a consideration? Why is it always a spending spree? How about giving it to us, the taxpayers who are already facing the heaviest tax burden in history for this region?

You want to spend that $180 million? Find a way to return it to the taxpayers, instead of giving it to a baseball team or throwing it out on the homelessness issue.

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